Radio heads and other equipment for amplifying and transmitting signals from antenna towers were traditionally positioned at the base of the tower in order to better facilitate the installation and maintenance thereof. However, there has been a problem with respect to the signal losses experienced and the power consumption involved in this configuration.
So called remote radio heads (RRH) have become an important subsystem of todays new distributed base stations. The remote radio head in general contains the base station's RF circuitry plus analog-to-digital/digital-to-analog converters and up/down converters. RRHs may also have operation and management processing capabilities and a standardized optical interface to connect to the rest of the base station. Relocating the transmission and amplification components to the top of the tower served to reduce the signal losses and power requirements, however, even though the signal was run through the feeder cable extending up the tower, it was also necessary to run a DC power cable up the tower in order to boost the signal power to the individual amplifiers. Also, this type of prior art system required a separate feeder cable to be connected with the individual radio leads for each amplifier at the top of the tower.
This construction presents problems in that a larger number of cables are required to run up the tower, which involves a number of cable pulls, and also undesirably occupies space on the tower. This is especially costly when one considers that the installation costs are increased with more cables, because installers typically charge per cable pull required, and the overall costs are increased because tower owners may charge by the number of cables. The added weight of numerous cables can be a drawback, as well as wind loading issues related to multiple-cable configurations on the tower. In addition, the use of more components introduces the potential for increased installation steps, and more maintenance issues associated with more connections.